On Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:57, Craig Coonrad wrote:

>In a nutshell, yes if you break the problem down in to
>socio/economic/cultural/gender subcategories, It becomes a complex
>problem. From the 30,000 foot view the corelation among population
>groups is still there.

>> Another perspective is, people often say that the rate
>> of alcoholism is high among native Americans because
>> of the loss of culture or power if you want.
>
>That I don't buy for a moment. The American Indians I know seem to be very
>proud people. If you follow that same logic the Japanese should have
>all become chronic alchoholics after they were conquered in WWII.
>
>Also you wouldn't argue that the American I
ndian's susceptibility to
>diabetes is a cultural phenomenon.

Human motivation is an incredibly complex phenomenon and I don't think we
should be looking for a simple, mono-causal explanation of the high
(disastrous) levels of alcohol consumption in societies that have recently
become 'civilized' - I use 'civilized' in the way Daniel Quinn uses it in
his books.

If you think of the Jewish holocaust around 60 years ago, massive though
it was, the affected Jewish populations have recovered socially and
psychologically.  The Jewish holocaust was a minor disturbance compared
with the tumultuous change civilization caused to previously hunter-
gatherer societies.  Not all of them, but those whose culture was distinct
in so many more deep-seated ways to the civilization that replaced it.
The example of the Japanese after WW2 illustrates the different cultural
responses to disturbing events.  The cli
che that 'the American Indians are
a proud people' has been used so often that we can easily be diverted from
understanding, not led towards it.  Pride does not help much if you lose
your social structure, land and the ability to live every minute of the
day within your cosmology.

As well as this, their physiologies were often just different enough from
ours to make the effect so much worse.

I don't know anything about the many Amerindian groups, but I do know the
anomic situation of many members of Australian Aboriginal groups is all-
embracing.  And they are pummelled from all sides: those who ask them to
integrate, those who impose integration upon them (missions, medical
workers, English language teachers, school systems generally, all actions
that require money etc.) and those, on the other hand, who expect them to
be Aboriginal and reject - in varying degrees - Westernization.